


The pretty follies that themselves commit

by middlemarch



Category: GLOW (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Declarations Of Love, F/M, Georgette Heyer - Freeform, Hot Tub, References to Drugs, Romance, You didn't see that one coming, copious use of profanity, yeah - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-05
Updated: 2020-11-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:08:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27407854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: The moment was fractal, shattering. Out of time.
Relationships: Russell Barroso/Ruth Wilder, Sam Sylvia/Ruth Wilder
Comments: 12
Kudos: 14





	1. Chapter 1

_“You have to know I’m in love with you.”_

Back in his room with its perfectly made beds and a view of the Strip twinkling like fucking Christmas lights, it didn’t sound the same. He took a drag on his cigarette, ran a hand through his thankfully not-thinning hair and thought of nothing. Emptiness. The night sky over the real desert a few miles away, the stars a petty distraction from the darkness. Something like half of them were dead already. Nothing was surprisingly loud when he was alone. He almost didn’t hear the little knock on the door. Shit. Nothing good ever came from a little knock on the door like that.

Ruth was standing there in a pale yellow bathrobe, her hands hanging loose at her sides as if there was no universe in which she’d just knocked on his door. Her hair was down, loose around her face, which he frankly preferred to the teeny-bopper ponytail she wore to the hot tub. He could almost pretend none of that had happened, that she was stopping by to see if he had some aspirin so she didn’t have to buy some at the over-priced gift shop, except for the look in her eyes. He let himself consider whether they were more grey than blue or more blue than grey and he knew it was killing her that he hadn’t said anything. Well, fuck. She’d walked away. She could talk first.

“Can I—may I come in?”

“Why?” he asked. He tried to keep his voice even but he knew he sounded mean. And bitter. What else could she expect?

“We need to talk,” she said, chin up in that way she had that should have been annoying as fuck, like a mediocre Katharine Hepburn impression, like she’d practiced it in front of her goddamn mirror for hours, except that her rejection notwithstanding, he was still in love with her and so it got him, the way it always did.

“No good conversation ever starts that way,” he said. He didn’t move, didn’t make any space for her to brush past him. Her right hand, the one she’d knocked with, fiddled with the belt of her bathrobe. He glanced down, saw her feet were bare.

“Then we won’t have a good conversation. But I think, Sam, I think we need to talk. More. Not in a hot tub when we’re both half-naked,” she said. She didn’t add “and drunk,” which was big of her. He shrugged, made a huffing, exasperated sound and gestured for her to come in, which he was always going to do. 

“This is better? Alone in my bedroom in your bathrobe?” he asked. They were standing within arm’s length, close enough he could reach the sash of her robe and pull it free from the loose bow she’d tied. He stepped back, some errant chivalrous impulse guiding him. Or protecting him, who the fuck knew.

“Better enough,” she said. “It was hard, talking to you that way.”

“You don’t know the half of it, sweetheart,” he retorted. She laughed.

“What? That was funny. Wasn’t it? Wasn’t it supposed to be?” she said. Jesus fucking Christ she was beautiful.

“Ruth, why are you here?”

“You said, I had to know. I had to know you were in love with me and that I was being an idiot.” She could have dropped her eyes or looked over his shoulder at the night sky, but she didn’t. Of course she didn’t. She kept looking at him and maybe he should have been patient and waited for her to say something else. Fuck it.

“Yeah, I did. I am and you are,” he replied. A smirk would have hurt too much, him and her. 

“One dinner isn’t a courtship,” she began.

“It’s been more than one dinner, Ruth, for fuck’s sake. It’s been every day, it’s been a drink in my room and going over cues, walking to the elevator, a last cup of coffee, whatever fucking measly amount of time you’re willing to grant me,” Sam interrupted. 

“It wasn’t enough for me to know. Not the way you mean. Meant. It hasn’t been enough for me to trust, well, either of us,” she said.

“To trust? What the fuck do you mean?”

“Sam, the first day you met me, you made it clear you didn’t find me attractive. When I made the trailer for the show, you froze me out, kept me off stage for weeks. Fired Reggie. When Debbie broke my leg, you kept filming,” she said. He had, he’d regretted it as he’d done it, know the footage was priceless, knowing she was hurt, hurting, wanting him to rescue her. Letting Russell do it, for fuck’s sake.

“I’m a sonuvabitch. Top shelf. You knew that but it didn’t stop you from hanging around,” he said. It crossed his mind to tell her she was the loveliest woman he’d ever seen, that he liked it better than her beauty didn’t hit you over the head like a fucking two-by-four, that she could look plain and tired and drawn. Human. That she had a face he wanted to see when he woke up in the morning, even on a shitty grey California winter morning when everything looked like crap except for the woman next to him. But now it might seem like he was just trying to get in her pants or whatever was under the daffodil robe. Or she’d brush it off, like it wasn’t important when it was. Everything about her was.

“It didn’t,” she admitted. “Because you weren’t always that way. Because you’re the one I want to be there, even if that scares me. Terrifies me.”

“This some Harlequin grade shit about how you don’t trust me with your heart?” he said. “Are we supposed to speak in the language of flowers—am I supposed to give you a fucking black orchid or something when you give me a yellow carnation?”

“No, this is me trying to tell you, it’s not so easy. It’s a risk, everything’s on the line for me, Sam,” she said.

“Everything? You don’t think I’d fire you if we had a fight. You don’t fucking think that, Ruth. Not before today and not after,” he said flatly.

“I don’t think that. I think it would be a royal mess, I think it would be miserable, Bash would try to say something and it would be all wrong, but that’s all. I mean, I don’t have a lot of friends, Sam,” she said.

“What’re you talking about? You filled a hospital waiting room with friends and Sheila is ready to rip out the throat of anyone who bothers you,” Sam said. 

“That’s not personal, with Sheila. I’m in her pack, even if I’m not the omega anymore. And the rest, yeah, we’re friends. I guess. But not the kind you can go to for anything. They like me well enough but they don’t know me,” she said.

“And I do?”

“Don’t you? Isn’t that what this is about?” She finally raised her voice and her cheeks were flushed. 

“I need a drink,” he said abruptly.

“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t make this something deniable. Something that never really happened.”

“Fine. You’re saying I’m your only friend, that’s what you’re saying? That our friendship is too precious to risk? Cue the fucking tiny violins.”

“I’m saying I was lonely before we met. Miserably fucking lonely and then I wasn’t and I can’t face it. I’m saying you say you’re in love with me but you say it like it’s a threat, a weapon, like I’m hurting you by not just saying _I love you too_. You said this was supposed to be fun, that we could be good together but how?” she said.

“Like we were today,” he said. “You had a good time, I know you did. I did.”

“I did. It was scary though, how I couldn’t tell how much time was passing, like it wasn’t real,” she said.

“That’s why I gave you my watch,” he replied.

“No, you gave me your watch so I’d remember you. When I wore it, when I looked at my wrist. That was a promise,” she said. She was right of course, the way she could be when she let herself be direct. It was the kind of thing he would have told her, if she’d said she loved him back when they in the hot tub, assuming they were talking and not fucking. In the hot tub, in his bed, against that window full of starlight, Ruth’s legs wrapped around his, her voice crying out for _more, more._

“Is this where I’m supposed to say something like, I don’t break my promises? Because I do,” he said.

“I know,” she said. Why that was what did it, he had no fucking idea, but she sat down suddenly on the neatly made queen bed he never used. He stepped closer, sat down on his own bed, facing her.

“Why did you come here, Ruth?” he asked again, as close to gentle as he ever got. 

“I can’t cheat on Russell. I don’t want to be that person, that homewrecking, cheating bitch. Zoya the destroyer,” she said. They weren’t married and she was in Vegas and Russell hadn’t been out in weeks to see her because of overtime or whatever the fuck excuse he came up with, but Sam didn’t say any of that.

“You ever going to forgive yourself for fucking Debbie’s husband?” he said. 

“I don’t think so,” she said. “You think I should?”

He thought Debbie’s husband was a greedy, fatuous asshole and he hadn’t been the least surprised to hear the man had taken up with his goddamn fucking secretary in the most cliched move of all time. He’d agreed to name his kid Randy, after all. They wouldn’t have a show without the guy’s dick, so Sam couldn’t entirely regret his existence on planet Earth but it wasn’t a ringing endorsement by a long shot.

“Yeah, I think you should. And I’m fucked up in a lot of ways but I’m not a liar. But I also think you should dump Russell and give us a chance. I think I should give you a reason to do that. Reasons plural. To start with, I’ll need your help in getting my own fucking library card,” he said, getting down off the bed and kneeling in front of her, which startled the glum expression right off her face.

“Are you proposing now? Sam—” 

“No, I’m just trying to get you to see this, us, in a new light. But you’re going to have to see it fucking soon, Ruth, because my knees aren’t up to much. Shit, I am old,” he said. 

“I wasn’t thinking about that all day. C’mere,” she reached out her hand to help him up, didn’t let it go. It was awkward as hell but he wasn’t going to stop touching her unless she pulled away.

“I can’t say it back yet. But I think I want to stay here. With you. Not in this bed though, that one,” she said, pointing to the one he obviously slept in every night. “I like the side closer to the window.”

“I’m not going to put out just because you bought me a steak, Ruth, just so we’re clear,” he said. He remembered her face when she’d almost gone all in at blackjack, how she’d looked at him and it had taken everything not to lean over and kiss her. Kiss her until the imperturbable dealer coughed weakly, even more uncomfortable when they stopped and he had to look, however briefly, at something far more unnerving than lust. 

“Crystal,” she answered, her eyes bright with tears. Who the fuck cared about stars?


	2. Chapter 2

_“You have to know I’m in love with you.”_

“Is that my cue to say I love you too? Because it didn’t seem like it. It seems like an accusation, like I’m doing something to hurt you,” Ruth said after the longest fucking moment of his life. She been staring at him as he spoke, her big eyes even bigger, her lips tightly closed, but if he’d expected her to make some flustered, incomprehensible exclamation or pout, it seemed he’d been wrong. Again. 

“I’m not a goddamn actor, Ruth. I’m not fucking around,” was what he managed. The glass of Scotch in his hand felt like an anchor, the water in the hot tub seething around them both. If he’d hoped his declaration would result in Ruth hurling herself onto him, if he’d thought the second declaration might have that effect when the first didn’t, seemed like he was once again shit out of luck.

“Neither am I. And I’m not acting. I don’t do that with you,” she said.

“Is that supposed to make me feel fucking special?” 

“Sam, I don’t understand, I don’t know why you’re talking to me like this,” she said. “If you want me to leave, I guess I’ll go. I thought you’d be happy to see me, but you’re not.”

“I guess I’m not, not if you don’t know what you want. Seems like you like jerking me around, seems like you want to have your fucking cake and eat it too,” he muttered.

“You’re a cake now?” Ruth tilted her head to the side. Adorable. Winsome. Infuriating. Still not his.

“I’m saying, you want to be friends, you don’t spend the whole day with someone, making big fucking eyes at me the whole time, and taking me out to dinner and putting your fucking hand on my fucking wrist like it’s a fucking Georgette Heyer novel,” Sam said.

“You’ve read Georgette Heyer?” This time, she sounded purely surprised. Well, he could understand that.

“The world’s my fucking oyster, Ruth,” he said sourly. “I’ve also read Kant, the Marquis de Sade, and Wole Soyinka.”

“I didn’t take you out to dinner. That was your money. I wouldn’t have won a chip without you telling me what to do,” she said.

“And that makes it a-okay, huh?”

“I’m just trying to tell you what I thought, how it felt to me,” she said.

“How’d it fucking feel when you grabbed me? How’s it feel when you walk around in front of me in next to nothing, when you catch my eye and give me that look, like only you and I know a fucking secret?”

“So my choices are being a cocktease or a cheater? Just to be clear,” she said. “That’s win-win for me.”

“That’s not what I meant. Shit,” he said.

“Yeah, well, I can’t argue with that. This feels shitty to me. Kind of like when you got angry at me for making the promo and treated me like a pariah for weeks. But I thought we’d moved beyond that. You say you’re in love with me, but I thought you liked me. And now I don’t know,” she said, sinking down a little deeper into the water. The tie of her bathing suit floated in his general direction, almost close enough for him to reach over the pull it. He imagined it, Ruth smiling as he tugged on the string, Ruth sidling over, leaning into him, maybe taking the Scotch glass out of his hand and taking a sip. Kissing him with the smoky taste of the single malt on her lips. In his arms, wet, eager. He looked over at her and she seemed a million miles away.

“I do like you. I am in love with you. I’m going fucking crazy trying to figure out what the hell you want. If you don’t want me, that’s your fucking prerogative, but I can’t do this anymore, be this close to you, without losing my mind and if you’re my friend the way you say you are, you’ll respect that. Give me some fucking space,” he said. He closed his eyes, tried to just listen to the bubbling water, the more distant noise of the city. Not his heartbeat thudding in his ears, not for the sound of Ruth’s breathing, the splash as she slipped out of the hot tub.

“I have to talk to Russell first,” Ruth said softly. She didn’t have to speak any louder because she was right next to him, almost but not quite touching him. He’d never seen her eyes so dark before. “I owe him that. He’s a good guy and I don’t want to treat him badly. Or any worse than I already have. I can’t be with you until I do.”

“Be with me?” he repeated.

“I’m not making love with you until I break up with Russell. Is that clear enough?” she asked. 

“Making love, huh? That sounds…fucking groovy,” Sam replied, the relief coursing through him making him positively giddy. It felt better than any blow ever had, though he didn’t think she’d really appreciate that comparison.

“Saying I’m not fucking you left too much room for interpretation,” she explained. She cursed, though not as much as he did, but hearing her say the words, watching her lips curve as she said _fucking you_ , knowing she had to have imagined them doing it, in the hot tub or his bed or God help him in the elevator, made him breathless. And hard. 

“Got it,” he managed to say.

“So tell me, do you have a favorite Heyer? _The Grand Sophy?_ ” Ruth said.

“You don’t want to go call Russell?” he asked. He sounded impatient, demanding. Selfish. “You know, fucking ring-a-ding-ding?”

“In a little while,” Ruth said. “It’s nice to sit here, isn’t it? You were right about the hot tub.”

“You’re fucking impossible,” he said.

“You already knew that.”

“I did. Yeah, it’s nice. I only remember _Regency Buck._ Make of that what you will,” Sam said. Ruth laughed.

“No one will believe you if you tell them,” Sam warned.

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Ruth replied. “That’s just between you and me.”


	3. Chapter 3

_“You have to know I’m in love with you.”_

“You--- I--- love?” Ruth sounded half-strangled, her voice barely above a whisper. Somehow, also a little of the Zoya accent had crept in, and he wasn’t going to lie, it was a fucking turn-on.

“Did that short-circuit something? What the fuck, Ruth—” Same broke off as Ruth started sinking down in the hot tub, the water rising over her face. He lurched over and grabbed her, pulling her up, feeling her rest her wet face against his bare shoulder. The inverse of the dance they’d shared at Justine’s formal, when he’d scared her off, driven her straight in Russell’s bed. She hadn’t collapsed that time, even though she’d had a better reason. He drew back a little, to let her go, and felt her clutch at him though she didn’t make a sound.

“What’s going on?” he asked. Beyond the obvious, that whatever line he’d though he was going right up to the edge of had been left far, far behind. 

“Everything was getting blurry, dark,” she murmured, against his skin. 

“As much as it pains me to admit it, I’ve never made a woman fucking swoon before,” he said.

“I had a drink before I came here. Dutch courage,” she said.

“One drink?” Yeah, she was slender, but he’d seen her put away a NY strip steak, creamed spinach, baked potato and banana cream pie about two hours ago. 

“A couple. Shots,” she said.

“I didn’t ask you to come,” he said. 

“I know. But you talked about it. I wasn’t sure if it was an invitation. Or a dare.”

“Look at me,” he said. He felt her tense in his arms, but he knew she’d do it. He needed to have a better idea of how much of this was liquor and how much was Ruth. He was a lot of shitty things, but he didn’t take advantage of drunk women, let alone the one he was fucking madly in love with. Also, at some point, no matter how drunk she was, she was going to notice his erection.

“You sounded angry, when you said it.” Her eyes were enormous and the heat of the water flushed her cheeks. She’d pulled back but kept her hands on his forearms, as if she needed his help to stay balanced.

“I don’t know what to fucking tell you, Ruth. I’m frustrated and I don’t mean blue balls, I mean, what the fuck are you doing,” he said.

“I don’t know. Just because you know doesn’t mean I do, at the exactly the same time. I’m not good at this—”

“There are at least twenty women in LA alone who would tell you I’m no fucking prince,” he said.

“It could ruin everything, us being together,” she said, biting her lip.

“That’s a little dramatic even for you, Sarah Bernhardt,” Sam said.

“I broke up Debbie’s marriage because I fucked Mark and we’re in Vegas because I wouldn’t sleep with Tom Grant, I’ve never had a relationship last longer than three months, and Russell, he’s so nice. He’s such a nice guy, Sam,” Ruth said. Sam decided to start with the easiest part.

“He is a nice guy. He’ll never understand you,” he said. “No matter how hard he tries and to be frank, I haven’t found nice guys actually try that hard to understand anything complex. Certainly not a woman. And not one like you.”

“Because I’m a fuck-up. A homewrecker,” Ruth said. Sam shrugged. However many pounds of flesh Ruth was, Debbie had gotten them all, even though he’d heard mutterings among the girls that the ex-husband had crawled up a fire escape and through Ruth’s window for the second go.

“Because you can’t stop poking at things. Because you have 87 million fucking opinions, because something working well enough isn’t ever enough for you. Because as much as an actor as you try to be, you can never quite hide that you want things people don’t think you should and most of the time, you don’t even try to,” Sam said, warming to the theme. She looked slightly less loopy but he wasn’t expecting any applause for his monologue. “Tom Grant is a predator you got away from. You didn’t do as well with Debbie’s loser husband but you hadn’t figured out how to be Zoya yet.”

“You’re only saying this because you love me,” she replied. So, that she could accept. Interesting.

“I only love you because of what I’m saying. Who you are,” he said.

“That’s right, you said the first day you don’t think I’m pretty,” she mumbled. She probably wouldn’t have been this direct if she were sober.

“You were a pain in the ass that first day. You’re beautiful, no one can take their eyes off you when you’re in the ring. Debbie looks like a busty giraffe next to you.” Ruth made a sound midway between a laugh and a sob with a good deal of hiccup. Then, because he was a mean sonuvabitch, he said, “What, Russell never talks to you like this?”

“No,” she said, first dropping her lashes and then gazing up through them like a goddam nymph.

“What a fucking waste of your time,” he said. 

“That’s not fair,” she said.

“Who said the truth had to be fair? You’re twenty-eight, not fifteen. It’s not fair that I’m in love with you and you don’t feel the same way,” he said.

“I never said that,” she said. 

“That’s right, you nearly drowned instead,” Sam said. “In a hot tub. That takes a certain level of skill. Real Vegas story.”

“I don’t want there to be a line,” she said. Seemed she hadn’t been too drunk to hear that part, to remember it and bring it back just when it would make his stupid fucking heart skip a beat. 

“No? What d’you want then, Ruth?”

“I want to be on your side, I want to read what you write in the margins—I want to be the only one you let all the way in,” she said. She tossed her head, presumably to get her wild curls out of her eyes, but it meant she pursed her lips and thrust out her tits and was the most erotic moment of his entire life.

“Jesus. Holy fucking Christ, Ruth.”

“In Nebraska, that’s blasphemy, you know. In Soviet Union,” she said, switching over to a credible Zoya impression, if you imagined Zoya had had a shitload of vodka on a borscht-less stomach, “is nothing, we are atheists, you American fool.”

“Yeah,” he said, wanting her so much he couldn’t manage anything else.

“But we’re in Vegas, Sam. So it’s just the goddamn truth,” she said and then with all the grace left in her, she arched up to kiss him, one hand on the back of his neck, keeping him where she wanted. As if he’d ever, ever pull away.

**Author's Note:**

> I had a lot of feelings about That Scene, which I decided to explore kaleidoscope style.
> 
> The title is from Shakespeare.


End file.
